The wide variety of hydraulic presses used for the manufacture of tubes, cable sheathing, rods, profiles, and wire in nonferrous metals has gone through an extraordinarily interesting development which commenced about 50 years ago after the advent of high-tensile hot working steels and has since adapted itself to the steadily growing de­ mands of the metalworking industry. This development has especially been promoted in Germany where many of the old presses are still in use for the extrusion of rods and tubes in heavy metals, and lead, already decades ago, to the construction of hydraulic presses which rank among the largest equipment built for noncutting shaping of metals. This book, therefore, draws in the main upon the German deve­ lopment, giving an account of the advances made in extrusion technique and press design and presenting to the reader the sum of the experience gathered. A great number of very instructive works dealing with the technological aspects in the extrusion of metals and the results obtained in metallurgical investigations has been published. These, it is true, contain important reference material regarding the design of presses and press tooling, but very few of them give a detailed description of the deve­ lopment and calculation of the machines or the requirements to be met by presses and tooling, so that the present book is to fill a gap in the existing literature.